Al-Watany Bank (AWB) board members have approved a request to increase the Egyptian bank’s issued capital to 700 million Egyptian pounds ($113 million) and its paid in capital to EP 500 million, reported Al-Alam Al-Youm .

Traditionally focusing on providing commercial banking services to the SME market, AWB is a small private sector bank that has seen rapid growth during the past few years. Over the past year however, concern was raised over AWB's weakening profitability, asset quality and capital adequacy trends.

Ranked 17th in Egypt in terms of total banking system assets, AWB has market shares of sector deposits and loans of just above one percent each. — (menareport.com)